A Step Back
by easytodancewith
Summary: Callie/Cole. Written in a similar vein to "A Single Step," which illustrates "missing" Callie/Cole scenes from episode 1x12, this fic looks at the events of 1x13 from Cole's perspective. Some elements taken from "The Fosters" 1x13, "Things Unsaid" (and some of the misgendering/cissexism featured in the episode is also represented here).


The thing about Rita is that she has a very penetrating voice. Even when she speaks at a normal volume, her words tend to carry, so when she's being stern? Forget it.

While the girls who have their privileges (and family members who give a crap about them) socialize in the big living room of the house, Cole sullenly sits alone at the kitchen table, scraping the ice cream from the bottom of his bowl and listening to Rita chastise Callie in the adjacent room.

"No more passes," Rita thunders.

There's a pause.

"Look at me. You got it?"

Another pause, then a small voice that must be Callie's says something Cole can't make out before it's back to Rita again.

"Good. You can go."

Cole briefly considers getting up so Callie doesn't see him, but decides it's not worth the effort. She meets his eyes as she walks past, her gaze smoldering, and he can hear her footfalls on the old wooden stairs as she heads up to the room they share.

It's not like he doesn't feel bad for her, but he can't help thinking it was her own fault for being so transparent. Running outside and clinging to her boyfriend in front of everyone like that? Not exactly a stealthy move. And the fact that the kid slipped her a cellphone in the process hadn't escaped Cole's notice either, although Rita didn't appear to have seen that or she would've confiscated it for sure. She was probably distracted by the hug, and Cole can't exactly blame her. He doesn't remember the last time somebody hugged him like that, as if he were their whole world. He's not sure that's ever happened to him, come to think of it.

The disconnect between Cole and his mother began before he was born. He told that to a shrink once and knew the man didn't believe him, but it was true; from the second she found out she was going to have a daughter, his mom began setting expectations that he could never hope to live up to. She was a former beauty queen - no Miss America, but she'd won a few local competitions and one regional title, which you'd have thought was an Oscar from the way she talked about it. She named him Nicole Ashley, decked out his bedroom in pastel pink and ruffly white trim, bombarded him with Barbie dolls and dresses and everything else that made his existence perfectly awful, and when he was finally old enough to vocalize how _wrong_ everything felt, it was like something died inside her. She'd never wanted a boy. She was a single mother born to a single mother herself, and she knew nothing of raising boys, hadn't even been able to look a man square in the eyes since she'd been raped nine months before Cole was born.

It took Cole a long time to realize that his mother saw having a daughter as the one redeeming thing to come out of what happened to her. He knew being unable to live up to what she wanted wasn't his fault, but that didn't change the fact that he failed her, basically took the one light in her life and extinguished it. She never mistreated him, exactly, but he knew she didn't love him, and when he ran away from home, he wasn't sure who out of the two of them was more relieved.

The point was, she'd never held him like that guy held Callie. She'd barely touched him at all, actually, and God knows the girls he'd liked at school never wanted anything to do with him, which basically meant he was out of luck in the affection department. After he started living on the streets, some of his johns stroked his hair sometimes, encouraging him as he swallowed the bitter fruits of his labor, but he wasn't stupid - their affection was about as real as his enthusiasm.

Seeing Callie with her boyfriend had just kind of messed him up, was all. He'd given up on ever having the chance to feel love like that a long time ago, but that didn't mean it was easy to see someone else experiencing it.

**xXx**

Callie sneaking off to see her boyfriend during the field trip was the worst-kept secret at Girls United since she'd pushed Cole into the shower door the previous week. Rita couldn't prove anything, so Callie didn't get punished, but Cole could tell by the look Callie shared with Daphne that there was more to the story than just getting lost on the way to the bathroom. It didn't take a genius to figure out why Callie would take that kind of risk.

**xXx**

Cole doesn't have a lot of time to dwell on the Callie situation before the group takes a bathroom break, which, long story short, doesn't go as uneventfully as it should have. It seems like common sense for him to wait in the guys' line, is all. Cisgender people get to pee in bathrooms where they feel comfortable, so he should be afforded the same right - right? The lamest part isn't even the woman who tells him he's confusing the younger students, nor the security guard who touches him, nor the guy who calls him a freak, nor the fight that breaks out as a result; it's the mandatory "discussion" Rita holds after they get back to the house, which is really more of an everyone-yells-at-Cole session than anything else.

Gabi says he's an angry person. Daphne's offended that his "issues" are affecting her life. Pretty much everyone is mad that their field trip got cut short - as if that's the real issue here - and Kiara says he needs to get over himself, which makes it sound like being trans is comparable to having a big ego or something. It's kind of funny that she thinks his "trantrums" are about special treatment when all he really wants are the same rights as everybody else.

By the time Rita calls on Callie, Cole's eyes are burning with unshed tears and his throat feels dry and tight. When Callie says she thinks he's right, his first instinct is to assume he misheard her, but then she continues.

"You just want him to do what's easy for you," she says slowly, addressing the group, "but sometimes what's right isn't easy. You say that you think Cole makes things hard on himself, but what you actually mean is that he makes things hard on you, so maybe you should just stop thinking about yourself all the time and cut Cole a little slack."

By the time she's done talking, Gabi looks haughty, Rita looks proud, and Cole's about to cry for a very different reason.

**xXx**

It takes about an hour for the glow of Callie sticking up for him to be displaced by a snarky men's room comment from Gabi, who's waiting outside the bathroom door when Cole finishes brushing his teeth. He deals with Gabi in two ways, yelling or ignoring, and he's all yelled out after group so he chooses the latter, walking past her and Daphne without a word.

Callie's standing in the doorway of the room they share, and when he looks at her, something softens inside him. If the girls behind him are jagged edges and stone, Callie is gentle lines and fleecy material, like the coat he wears when it's cold out.

"Um, thanks," he tells her, trying not to sound overly gracious or awkward. "You know, for what you said in group."

She won't quite look at him as she passes. "Yeah, it's no problem."

He sits on his bed, gazing at the floor as Callie and Daphne stand outside, waiting for Gabi to emerge. Daphne calls him Callie's new best friend and Callie says "Not quite," which hurts more than he expects it to, and then they start talking about the independent living program, how Daphne's leaving Girls United in two weeks for an apartment of her own. Cole knows what Callie's thinking - if she can get into the ILP, then Brandon can come visit whenever he wants.

After Gabi flounces to her room and Daphne locks the bathroom door behind her, Callie hovers in the hallway for a moment before sneaking downstairs, presumably to retrieve the cellphone from wherever she hid it. Cole's not sure what motivates him - jealousy of her boyfriend, the desire to give her an alibi if she gets caught by Michelle, or simple curiosity - but he slides off the bed and pads down the stairs behind her.

**xXx**

He wasn't expecting her to have stashed the phone outside, and the cool evening air chills his bare arms and calves as he steps out of the back door to find Callie crouched by the wall of the house.

"I'll take that," he says calmly, and she turns around like a deer in headlights.

"No," she responds, but it sounds more like a question than a statement.

"Do you want me to go call Michelle?"

She stands, but says nothing.

"Fine. You'll get caught with it, no more sneaking out to see your boyfriend, sure as hell no ILP." He can tell she knows he has her backed into a corner by the expression on her face. "Give it?"

She does.

"Smart. I'm gonna toss this," he tells her, slipping the battery out of the back. "It's for your own good."

She doesn't respond - doesn't do much of anything, actually - and although he fully intends to discard the phone and stash the battery somewhere for safekeeping, his intentions change by the time he reaches the trash can in the kitchen. He turns around furtively, but Callie's still outside; he can see the top of her head through the window. Without thinking any more about it, he jams the phone into the pocket of his shorts and heads back upstairs.

**xXx**

When Callie returns, Cole pretends to be asleep. He waits for her breathing to get deep and even, then pulls out the phone and heads to the bathroom for some privacy. Brandon's is the only name saved in the contacts, which he thinks is pretty messed up - he'd expected her to at least have her brother in there. Their texts are like a train wreck he can't seem to tear his eyes away from - _I miss you_ and _I can't stop thinking about you_ and _Seeing you meant everything to me_, and then something about how Brandon feels like half a person whenever Callie isn't around that he isn't able to read very closely before his eyes start to well up with angry tears.

Callie acts like she's lost everything, but the truth is, she has way more right now than Cole's _ever_ had.

When the phone lights up with a new text, Cole almost drops it. It's Brandon (obviously), asking when he can see Callie again. Cole looks at himself in the mirror, stares at the hurt written all over his face, and then starts typing.

**xXx**


End file.
